Dad’s Work May Have Killed Son

September 7, 2006 - An IBM product and design engineer from England recently died of mesothelioma, possibly as a result of being exposed to the hazardous material from the clothes of his father when he was a child.

The coroner for Winchester stated that Brian Parrish, age 68, “may have breathed in asbestos dust after it had been brought home on his father's overalls.”  Another possible cause may have been Brian’s short stint as a shipbuilding and engineering apprenticeship in the late 1950s.  In fact, said the coroner, the combination of the two may have been enough to cause the disease, an aggressive form of cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs.  The only known cause of mesothelioma is asbestos exposure.

According to an account in a Hampshire (UK) newspaper, Brian’s father, Henry, had been employed by Cape Asbestos Company Ltd as its southern area supervisor and head of the Isle of Wight Insulating Contracts Marine Unit.  He died of mesothelioma in 1959 at the age of 47.

The younger Parrish died within less than a year of his diagnosis.  "Whether or not he was infected due to the asbestos dust his father brought home in the mid-50s or his apprenticeship, or a mixture of the two, I am unable to determine, and unfortunately we will never know," the coroner added at a recent inquest.